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Published: November 20th 2006
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One of my English conversation class students, Watanabe-kun in front of the old-style training ship. He's only 17 years old and already operating ships. The season of “bunkasai” is here and everyone is busy with preparations. A “bunkasai” is a festival that all schools (even through college) hold around this time in Japan. The word “bunkasai” literally translates to “culture festival,” but it’s really just a school festival with food stands and student performances. Just as the undookai (sports festivals) and aki matsuri (fall festivals) created a lot of chaos and exhaustion earlier this fall, preparing for the bunkasai is just as strenuous, but lots of fun at the same time.
However, my junior high school’s bunkasai is not till this weekend, but last weekend I had the opportunity to go to yuge shoosen’s bunkasai. Yuge Shoosen is the merchant ship school here that is like a high school and a technical college combined. The age of the students there range from 15 to 21 years old. I may have mentioned before that some of the older students attend my English conversation class every week. The school is an international school, and most of its international students come from other parts of Asia (namely Malaysia and Indonesia). Therefore they have an interest in foreign languages and many of them are quite good at English.
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The crew singing at the top of the mast. SCARY! These international students provide Yuge island with all the diversity it has other than me.
So, it was an interesting bunkasai with all the international students. At noon I had the opportunity to ride on the school’s ship where they train the students. It’s called the Yuge Maru and we rode all the way around the island. I wasn’t expecting it to be that exciting since I take ferries all the time around the islands near here, but I told some of my English conversation class students that I would come since they were going to be part of the crew. It actually ended up being really interesting, because we got to check out all the different rooms, like the crew quarters, the dining hall, and the control room. I stayed in the control room while the captain gave all the orders to the students, and they worked all the high-tech navigation equipment. It was really fun and made me want to become a sailor too!
While we were on the other side of the island, we came across another type of training ship that was anchored a bit offshore. This training ship was a really old type
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The Yuge Maru's log book, which was surprisingly written in English. of ship that uses masts for navigating. We circled around it a couple times to get a good look at it and waved to all the crew onboard. Then the crew put on a little show for us. They climbed to the top of the highest mast and sang a song at the top. It looked terrifying, but I guess they’re used to that sort of thing.
After we pulled back into the school’s port, I ate a lot of the various festival foods being served by all the different school clubs. Then I heard loud music coming from the gym, so I decided to check that out. Some student bands were playing inside, and I was surprised to see that the lead singer of one of the bands was one of my Malaysian students from my English conversation class. He’s usually so quiet and polite in class, but he was just the opposite on stage. It was fun, and made me miss my band back in the States.
The next day I went to one of the larger islands nearby, called Setoda. There was a kind of taiko drum festival being held there. All of the taiko
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Onboard the Yuge Maru....it was a stormy day. groups from the area gathered at the festival to perform, and there were also some professional taiko musician performances. I went with some of my older, artsy friends from Yuge, including my appointed Yuge mom and dad. My Yuge mom is Misayo-san, who plays in my mandolin group. My Yuge dad, Yamazaki-san is a retired sailor who now spends most of his time making pottery on Yuge. Te-chan, a professional potter on Yuge also came with us. We spent the day strolling around the old streets of Setoda listening tho the amateur taiko groups perform. All of the amateur groups performed in various outdoor lots around the town, so we just walked from one to the next.
Then, at the end of the day we went to the professional taiko group’s performance in the concert hall. It was amazing to see what these people could do on the giant drums. Taiko is somewhat different from other countries’ traditional drumming in that it is a complicated progression of choreographed moves that go along with the beat of the drum. The drums themselves are made out of a whole section of a giant tree hallowed out, which makes them extremely pricey.
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Inside the control room. The students are listening to orders from their captain. Spending the day with my older friends is always great because they always insist on taking me out to eat. For lunch, Te-chan treated us all to a really nice meal at an expensive sushi restaurant. The ingredients included all kinds of unusual food, like chrysanthemum flowers (quite tasty). Te-chan brought some of his pottery as gifts for the cooks, and they were so happy that they gave me an antique plate that they had; Just an example of the excellent hospitality in this country. For dinner, Yamazaki-san treated us all to a delicious meal at an expensive Italian restaurant. My dinner included five courses (appetizer, salad, bread, pasta, dessert and coffee). I felt like I gained at least a couple pounds afterwards.
Overall, it was another fun weekend. My next blog should include all the details of my junior high school’s bunkasai. So check back!
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